When We're Free
by Catharsiss-BridgetteHayden
Summary: Harry and Draco must find a way to leave their past behind them. Brief one shot.


Summary: Harry and Draco must find a way to leave their past behind them. Brief one shot. Notes: Inspired by Alekina's painting of Harry removing the dark mark from Draco's arm, on tumblr at  
post/110998951140/he-wants-to-laugh-at-the-irony-he-really-does-as

Work Text:

It's 2:00 AM. Glare from the street spills into their dark living room. Their apartment is at ground level and sickly yellow light pours right onto the pullout sofa. Right onto the baby sleeping in Draco's arms. City sirens and neighbors arguing turn out to be the perfect lullaby for the child. It's a muggle baby and her mom hasn't come home again. He and Harry were beginning to get used to that. You try not to get involved with muggles. They're heartbreaking. It's bad enough that they don't have magic, they don't seem to have much else either. Not the ones he and Harry meet as they go from lease to lease, rental to rental. They could easily afford better places, but the idea is to lay low. Hold jobs, gain citizenship. Escape the past before the past drags them back.

Draco swears, once he and Harry are free, they're going to live to the height of their wealth. No one should live in a place where things crawled and you could hear a woman taking punches in the gut. No more of that shit. He and Harry had put a stop to it, though they had tried not to get involved. American women had a reputation for being tough, for solving their own problems. That certainly wasn't true with their neighbor. If the woman didn't have the sense to pick better johns, there was nothing to be done for it. But the baby… They couldn't listen to the baby and let it go on. So now, Draco was the proud volunteer babysitter while Harry worked nights. The jobs both of them had were only temporary. Just a legality. Just until the US government was convinced.

The plan was to stick it out for six months. Flee to America, to New York, and get lost in the neon lackluster club scene. Pose as common drug addicts if necessary, even though the magic in their blood would dilute synthetic chemicals. No risk there, which is why it was so brilliant. Blend right in with grimy rejects and beautiful misfits whose families had thrown them away ages ago. Or given up on their return home.

Draco knew that his father would never give up searching for him. There was nothing he could do to prevent that, but he could make sure that he was a legal citizen by the time Lucius found him.  
That meant that he and Harry had to stick to their plan. The first thing, had been to get rid of the marks that identified them so well. Not easily done. The marks are deeper than skin surface. Their blood is magic, intelligent, and knows to rebuild scar tissue after cryotherapy has removed it. It knows to color in the dark mark after lasers have faded it. His father was right. Blood knows magic. Their blood knew who they were and would hold them accountable to it.

The last illegal concoction the both of them took to alter their blood chemistry, and use the window to cast the strongest spells on one another's skin, Harry had gotten so sick that Draco had to involve an underground mediwizard. Turns out, magical trafficking was the foundation of organized crime, in the States and all over the world. People knew Draco's father. And every time he needed someone's help or service, he'd had to pay with his inheritance. Lucius might not know of his exact location, but the expenditures told him that his son was still alive. On the run with Harry Potter, but still alive.

Draco had had to do the mediwizard a favor that night. He'd had to do something disgusting and wrong, to get Harry the counter potions he'd needed. That, without knowing if it would help Harry or not. That was okay. Harry never had to know something that would hurt him. It's not wrong to keep secrets if you're protecting another person. Besides, Harry had sacrificed plenty for him.

After three months in a crumbling tenement, the real question stood between them.  
Leave it to Harry to put it out there, last night before leaving for work.

"Do we give up our magic, to keep each other? They'll find us this way. We'll be dragged back to the trials. We'll never be free of it. We should do the procedure. At least that way, we'll be muggles, but we'll have each other."

Draco couldn't imagine a life without magic. And he didn't trust the research behind radical methods that broke the bonds of one's ancestry and stamped on a new, false identity. Underground schemes promising the desperate a new start, was just another pact with the devil. After Voldemort, you knew them when you saw them.

Draco knew, that Harry knew, he didn't want to be asked to do that. To ask him again, after all this time, was like asking him to swallow a poison that would end both their lives. Harry was always so hopeful. Harry really was the savior, willing to sacrifice anything. But Draco was tired of running down dead ends, tired of living in squalor, tired of seeing how hard muggles really have it. He weighed all of that against Harry's crooked glasses, his lawless smile, and what they share when they manage to block the world out and tune into each other. He weighed it against the neighbor's infant in his arms, and thought of the line he'd learned in his muggle studies. The biblical line where Jesus feels fear, has a moment of doubt, and asks the muggle god to, "Take this cup of poison away from me." But then he does it. He drinks it. He gives everything to love, knowing it will kill him.

Draco isn't sure that he could ever be that strong for Harry, but he's willing to die trying.  
"I'll do it. We'll do it. We'll give up our magic and become muggles for good."

That way, whatever changes and transformations they chose, would stick. They had a shot at survival. They had a shot at a real life together, where no one knew them.

End.

A/N: I'm thinking something goes wrong and only Draco's magic is removed, while Harry is twice as magical. So he has to really look out for Draco. Ah, the potential is intoxicating. If anyone know a good fic similar to this, please provide link. Thanks.


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